Hex Crawl 23 #260: Sinister Bare Ridges

 Four hexes northwest, eight north of Alakran.

 

These hills, not graced with a name, have an evil reputation in Kin-Yan. They are the barren end of an otherwise wooded series of ridges, but it is not the high points that are shunned, but the valleys. Supposedly those low places were carved by the great two-headed demon, ill luck to name, dragging its tentacular limbs in the manner of ploughs to sow all manner of vileness. Scoundrels fleeing pursuit from villagers, or from the nearby military garrisons, might do well to remember this. All the same, an arrow and a sling stone from the heights can catch a person unless they are very well hidden in the valley. And whether a curse does linger in the vale, none have dared for generations to find out.

Hex Crawl 23 #104: Lake Halluwitar

 Five hexes southeast, one south of Alakran.

 

A rising ridge of the folded hills has trapped the course of the Shi-Ar behind it, creating a dammed lake that the river spills out of in a wide, shimmering fall.With the drought-dwindling of the course, the waterfall has become ragged, and the lake has receded down its steep banks, leaving a waterline of cracked mud.

The Dulsha knew this lake as Halluwitar, and saw it as a place of far journey and alienation, a place to retreat and make private amends, to confront the solitude and danger of the wilds to the south. Thus it appears in poetry and legend -- the place where the folk-prophet Esessu conversed with the fishes and proclaimed them wiser than she; the deeps wherein Lubardas threw the bronze-melting sword that slew his friend and lover Kemak; the place where Prince Kalashma bid his retainers wait as he rowed upstream straddling a pine log, only to float downriver seven days later, his corpse pinned to that log by his own oar. In the face of these and other dire legends, to venture onto the plains at the lake's southern end requires either a complete disregard of precedent and superstition, or a veritable bandolier of apotropaic charms, prayer scrolls, and demon-quelling unguents.